For this reason, it is not surprising that the candidate of the Socialist Party and current Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, obtained an ‘electoral tip’ of 1.7%; while Valérie Pécresse, the Republican candidate, added a humiliating 5%. These two traditional parties of rooted Elites that assumed political alternation in the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, leave (literally) the French political scene without pain or glory.
Despite this, there seems to be no clear recognition or understanding of the situation, at least by some of its main leaders: Hidalgo herself maintained after the election that she will use her political energy to “conquer a France stronger, more beautiful and fairer. Under a modern left, open, of all colors, inventive. Because without it, the France we want, the democratic, social, secular and European republican France, cannot fulfill its promises of freedom, equality and fraternity”. The interesting thing is that it not only describes a country that no longer exists; but, basically, it develops a dialectical structure that no longer serves – nor does it reach – anyone.
Let’s go then for the winners. On the one hand, the young ex-banker Emmanuel Macron, a pro-European neoliberal leader, was the winner with 27.6% of the votes. In these years of government – beyond the positive effect implied by his active role in the face of the pandemic and the crisis in Ukraine -, the president managed with the support of the establishment – tax reduction and labor flexibility through -, which helped to motorize the economy with investments that generated hundreds of thousands of jobs (unemployment fell from 10% to 7.4% in his term), and collaborated to weigh up the social bad mood generated by the increase in fuel prices and his triggering conflict with the ‘yellow vests’, or even the project to increase the retirement age, among others.
For its part, the great choice of Marine LePen (23.2% of votes) derived from the weariness – as happened with Mélenchon (third with just over 21%) – of a population tired of the failures of the center-left and the center-right. Empty speeches of values that do not fill neither the refrigerator nor the soul. Just to cite one example, in recent decades wages have been depreciating in real terms, and a large part of the population with paid employment lives on incomes just above the poverty line (which makes current price increases ‘ of war’ hit the pockets of the majority very severely).
That is why the National Grouping candidate reached out to those French people who see globalization – and the consequent immigration – as a risk to their principles and their economic well-being (“the real problems of the French people”), especially those of the Rural and more conservative France – he has already asserted that if he wins the elections is going to ban the wearing of the Islamic hijab in public areas -. In addition, he endogenously moved towards the center – he expressed that he preferred to reform the European Union “from within” instead of abandoning it, as well as that he will remove contributions from companies if they increase the minimum wage of their employees by 10%, among others -, and by external osmosis before a far-right populist candidate like Zemmour, who showed her, in comparative terms (which is relevant in electoral periods), as more moderate. Finally, she chose a different vocabulary – more comprehensive and softened – to explain her proposals, such as that she will govern “in the name of secularism and feminism”. Those specific issues that interest an electorate apathetic of the monumental unfulfilled promises, but who want to see their particular dreams of public policies come true.
In the case of the left-wing candidate, the ‘unsubmissive’ Mélenchon received the support of the impoverished middle class and the declassed workers of the big cities. Will the left ever understand that they must put aside misery and selfishness to have any chance of being able to rise to executive power? If we add to Mélenchon’s great election 2.1% from the Socialist Party, 3.2% from the Communist Party, and 4.7% from the Ecologist Party (which did not get a bad result appealing to the specific interest vote of a real problem), it would not be unreasonable that a potential alliance could dispute a ballotage with dignity. One understands that each historical moment is different, but it would be interesting if they soaked their beards while recalling the agreement of more than half a century ago between the communist Pablo Neruda, who declined his presidential candidacy, and Salvador Allende, so that the left reaches democratically for the first time to power in Chile.
But there is something else: rational pragmatism. “They accumulate demands, but they don’t even know how to respond to them, or what the priorities should be,” a leftist militant from the plains complained quite rightly. It is that denouncing that the richest 10% of households own almost 50% of the total wealth and 160 times more than the poorest 10%, today is no longer enough. It is well known: when there is a vacuum of concrete and substantial proposals, the right dominates. Nothing more and nothing less than those conservative forces that want to preserve the system as it is.
Now, saving the historical, cultural, and political distances, can we make a symmetry between what happened in the French elections and what is experienced in other countries, especially in our Argentina?
Probably yes. The difference in the vote is clearly observed between the agricultural interior (the humid pampas) and the industrial poles (Greater Buenos Aires), the gaps generated between the impoverished neighborhoods and the rich ones (the classic thriving north and abandoned south within the same city) , apathy in the face of a political class that does not provide answers (the inequality and growing marginality experienced in the last half century), and the specific objectives of each citizen (conquests of gender, ecology, human rights, etc.) that, under a halo of sincerity, they have generated an abandonment of the desires of the always unfinished great collective ideological epics. Of course, we cannot forget the fears generated by what is different – immigrants, other social classes -, or even the fatigue caused by instability and poverty, which in turn clouds us to reason with a certain logic and does not allow us to reflect under a paradigm of certain ‘minimum human values’ (whose consequence could be, for example, the increase in social violence).
Of course, in the trends there are the counterpoints derived from the diffuse conjugation of the exposed variables, which make up an interesting Gaussian bell. Either because they think or feel (such as the huge libertarian vote in the humblest neighborhoods of CABA in the last legislative elections in our country), beyond the full understanding of the situation.
And discursive has a lot to do with it. In this sense, Le Pen understood it perfectly, since she stopped talking about the Muslim danger and began to mention as the central axis of her future government the purchasing power of the forgotten popular classes, of the losers of a globalization that has only favored the elites and that has Macron as one of its champions. Even more: he has revamped the discourse of his formation, figuratively killing his father and fabricating a newspeak capable of confusing unsuspecting leftists.
For the apathetic, his novel discursive mix could be reasonable or logical if it is broken down and analyzed more carefully. However, the most important thing to note is that for some time now and according to various polls, Le Pen’s National Regroupment voters do not see themselves as far-right people. They are, of course, but they think not. And for politicians, that is vitally important.
In short, a new way of doing and formulating politics is consolidating in the world. In this regard, what many French people, suspicious and reluctant to have to lean towards the ‘least bad’ candidate in the second round, are surely trying to elucidate, is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Economist and Doctor in International Relations. Twitter: @KornblumPablo
Source: Ambito
